


Geography Books No Longer Exist

by the_magnificently_angry_beaver



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, I AM SORRY, This Is STUPID, bellarke is mostly peripheral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 02:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3834073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_magnificently_angry_beaver/pseuds/the_magnificently_angry_beaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Grounders gave their settlements stupid names, and Bellamy is the only one who knows it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Geography Books No Longer Exist

**Author's Note:**

> I borrowed my title from a quote by Moshe Dayan: "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist."

He doesn’t say this out loud, but Bellamy thinks the Grounders’ method for naming their cities and settlements is _stupid_. And nothing will ever convince him otherwise, because he tells himself that it’s a fact rather than an opinion.

One of the more neglected resources in the Ark’s digital archives was their map collection. And he gets it—no point in looking at these things or learning about these places if a person couldn’t go there or if they didn’t exist anymore. The only reason he first consulted it—his mother, really—was because he wanted to know where the heroes and rulers Aurora told him about lived. She pointed out Rome on a map, and on another, Crete, where archeologists once found an ancient labyrinth. At his mother’s fingertips, he finally saw the scale of Alexander’s empire and the route Odysseus took home to Penelope and Telemachus, an area so small and yet apparently big enough for it to take him such a long time to see his wife and little boy again.

Then Octavia was born, and he wanted to show _her_ where those people lived, too. And when he got older and he’d read something new, he wanted to know where the characters, subjects, and authors lived, where they’d traveled. Died. He’d look at those maps, tracing the route Huck Finn traveled the Mississippi and finding the town in Connecticut where Mark Twain’s haunted house was. He followed the movements of soldiers in wars long over that didn’t destroy the world. Pickett’s route to Gettysburg, and from Trenton, New Jersey to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where Washington’s troops spent a terrible winter.

Washington, right.

Somehow all it took was some nukes and 97 years, and suddenly Washington, D.C. is reduced to a syllable and two letters. And a memorial for a dead president, which he also doesn’t understand. The Grounders haven’t forgotten names of presidents dead for longer than the old world—Delano, Fillmore, _Lincoln_ —and yet cities have names that are so recognizable and so stupid, and he wonders what else is out there other than TonDC and Polis. What was New York City is now part of the wasteland, and as far as he knows, it’s not called anything other than “wasteland.”

Is Philadelphia—if even part of it still stands—still referred to as “Philly” or is it “Phia?” Is St. Louis “Saint” or “Louis,” or “STLou?”   Is Detroit now just “Troit,” and what about Indianapolis and Minneapolis if Annapolis already took “Polis?”

But he doesn’t want to be rude, because if it were anyone else he’d just say that it was stupid, but because it’s something the _Grounders_ do, and relations are still not the best between their two groups, he’s not going to open his incredibly smart mouth and vocalize this fact.

He wouldn’t be so caught up in the stupidity of it all if his people were dying or something, so for the moment he’s going to be grateful that he can feel irritated over something this small.

This doesn’t stop him from groaning—at first internally, and later on just a tiny, little bit more vocally—every time he hears someone use one of _those_ names. It’s rude, but in a way it’s also cathartic for him to express his displeasure. It’s like saying “Fuck” during a tense moment; a small relief for a sometimes constant frustration. He just has to be mostly silent about it, because it wouldn’t be good if the Grounders were to find that out.

One day he’s not quiet enough though, because who overhears his tiny ( _tiny_ ) groan but Clarke. It’s at one of the worst times and places for it to possibly happen, too.

It’s in their bed, as they’re drifting off. The fire is lower now, but he can still feel the heat of it on his arm, the right side of his face. Clarke’s on her side with her mouth pressed to his shoulder when she says someone’ll need to go to TonDC to trade for supplies soon.

It is late, and he’s tired from training new guards all afternoon. Bellamy can’t help himself. It just… slips out.

As soon as that happens, he cracks one eye open. For a fraction of a second he hopes she thinks that he doesn’t want to go, or that he doesn’t want her to go without him, or that if she does go without him, or if he goes without her, that he’ll miss her horribly. They’re partners, after all, and partners do that, right? Especially if they’re as codependent as everybody else seems to think they are.

And she might think that, for that fraction of a second. But then the look on her face, curious and then, slowly, like it’s dawning on her, has him kicking himself. He knows, just _knows,_ that while he may hear the end of it, it won’t be any time soon. Because Princess is nothing if not a lady—almost nothing would ever be able to convince him otherwise—and ladies, especially ladies with fantastic leadership skills, are known for being polite.

“You really don’t like the name that much?”

_More like_ at all, Bellamy thinks, wanting to look like this subject _hasn’t_ been keeping him up at night. He bristles. Clarke notices, fixes him with a _look_ not unlike the one she gave him all that time ago as she convinced him to wander through an unfamiliar forest to rescue a kid who wore goggles on his head and neither of them really knew at that point. “It’s stupid,” he says, and he means it. Saying it out loud makes him feel a little lighter, in fact. It does not make him feel any less tired.

If he _was_ feeling less tired, he might be more inclined to do something about that look on her face, like kissing a different expression into replacing it. He’s thankful that this woman is just as smart as he is, if not smarter, and yet she chose him. But right now that knowing expression on her face tells him she’s got something of her own to say. “You know, plenty of cities had their names changed before the cataclysm. New York City was originally called New Amsterdam. St. Petersburg, for a time, was known as Leningrad. Istanbul was Constantinople.”

Bellamy is too tired to roll his eyes and so settles for running a hand through his hair. “I know. But in those instances people remember both names! Maybe not so much the first one, but I guarantee that before the cataclysm, people knew where someone was talking about, if they said Constantinople or Leningrad—or Stalingrad or Edo or Bombay—”

Clarke blinks at him. He knows she knows. History, geography, biology, basic first aid—that’s common fare for their pre-sleep conversations. In addition to being partners, they are camp leaders, after all, and they like each other’s brains most days. The only people whose pillow talk is probably more convoluted than theirs is Raven and Wick, and that’s because physics and science and all that gets them hot.

Bellamy sighs. “I’m just saying, it’s been 100 years and that’s all it took for people to change the name of the so-called capital of the free world? To the last five letters of the old name? Just the last five letters? It’s stupid and unoriginal.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Clarke says with a yawn. “Your brain is better than everybody’s.” She rolls over, facing away from him now, and he curls around her, one arm slung over her side, hand wrapped around hers. She laces their fingers together, presses a kiss to his knuckles. “You don’t have to like it. Just don’t tell any of the Grounders that’s what you think.”

“My brain is better than everybody’s, Princess. _I know_.”

**Author's Note:**

> There is no reason for this other than I really don't like the names TonDC and Polis. I decided that Bellamy doesn't either.
> 
> This is my first work for The 100 and I don't have a beta. I wrote this all in good humor and appreciate constructive criticism! I feel like there are several fart jokes in here somewhere, too.


End file.
